From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? #544505-01013

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? #544505-01013

June 9, 2010 4:33am

Submission Number:

544505-01013

Commenter:

Mark Wolf

State:

Ohio

Initiative Name:

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a 47-page bureaucratic plan for the “Reinvention of Journalism” that outlines a series of taxes that would stifle free speech and silence conservatives. MRC’s Vice President for Business and Culture, Dan Gainor, who helped break this shocking story, says the report contains the word “tax” 95 times and is part of “an extensive attempt by the Obama Administration to seize control of the press.” And the conservative media are directly in the crosshairs of the Obama team. The FTC paper includes… * A “Drudge Tax” on news aggregators like The Drudge Report who stand on the front lines of the struggle to expose the Leftist agenda. * A “journalism division” of AmeriCorps -- forcing taxpayers to pay the Obama Administration to train up the next generation of liberal journalists! * A direct Journalism Bailout fund to “help pay the salary of every journalist” -- YOU AND I will be forced to fund the liberal media! * A 5% tax on consumer electronics (like the iPad) * Possible taxes on cell phones, television and radio that would all be part of a massive $35 billion “Citizenship Media Fund” This new FTC document combined with the FCC’s moves to impose a “Fairness Doctrine” pose an ominous threat to conservative speech that would empower the Obama administration to control the dissemination of information while imposing punitive taxes on ideological opponents. We simply must respond and say “NO!” to Obama’s efforts to censor, regulate, tax and control our free speech!